Multi-homed networks are connected to other distant destination networks, via the Internet for example and through several networking service providers (SPs) such as Internet service providers as well as other packet-switched networks. Multi-homed networks are advantageous if one of the connections to an SP fails. As soon as a router interconnected to that SP determines that the connection is lost, it re-routes all traffic through other SPs. However, in order to decrease operational costs and improve network utilization, reliability and performance, multi-homed networks require bandwidth, performance and cost management and control. Bandwidth, performance and cost management and control typically involve measuring, evaluating and re-routing parts of the traffic from existing current routes to alternative available routes with improved quality of service (QoS). The problem becomes more difficult for networks distributed across multiple routing domains wherein each routing domain receives its own data and enforces its own routing policy. A single routing domain covers one or more point of presence with the same routing data and policy. Sometimes more than one routing domain can be distinguished in a single POP if sub-networks use differentiated routing data and apply different policies.
Some (controlled) networks distributed across multiple routing domains interconnect with each other via a data center interconnect (DCI). DCI are links with guaranteed quality of service for data transfer across routing domains. While it is possible to optimize each of the routing domains individually, the optimization process can only be performed locally. That is, optimization can be achieved only through a provider interface, as known to those skilled in the art, inside a routing domain in a multi-homed network. Outages, congestion and other degradation of QoS in one routing domain are addressed by network operators who manually change policies in routing domain with degraded QoS to re-route packets addressed to congested destination networks through DCI links towards a different routing domain with improved QoS. This is done only in cases when the problem becomes too big to ignore it due to limited human operator capacities and resources. Managing routes manually (i.e., set route priority and blocking policies which re-route some network prefixes to other provider interfaces) is too complex and time consuming for human operators when it must be performed on an ongoing or periodic basis and as such, many small problems that cause QoS degradation remain un-addressed. Consequently, traffic on computers networks is not routed as efficiently.
It would thus be advantageous to provide a system and method that will overcome the problems with the systems described above.